


A Life Gloriously Unpredictable

by TUNiU



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Canon Non-Binary Character, Spoilers, post discovery s03e03 people of earth, the sex is fade to black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:07:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27278485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Picks up where s03e03: People of Earth left off. Just where and how will the crew fit together now.
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	A Life Gloriously Unpredictable

**Author's Note:**

> So this story spoils a major plot point of "People of Earth." This story deals with that plot point in several ways. 
> 
> Also I originally refer to Adira as they/them because they are a non-binary character, even though the episode used 'she' a couple of times. 
> 
> A commenter said that the actor requested she/her at the start because they weren't out yet. So I'll follow the actor request and refer to Adira as she/her in fics that take place before the show refers to them as they/them.

Hugh sat eating lunch in the mess hall. He looked around at the various empty seats. The mess hall wasn't designed to hold a full ship's complement all at one time. The various crewmen ate according to a rota: First dinner, second dinner, third dinner….three shifts for each meal break--in order to fit everyone on the ship. The ship was still on this meal rotation even days after arriving in the future. Hugh reasoned that Captain Saru and Commander Burnham had more important things to worry about than recreating the meal rota. With only 88 crew, eating across three shifts, this did make the mess hall quite empty. A few people sat at various tables scattered around. They were eating in silence as they all tried to internalize the future.

His decision to stay with Paul on Discovery had been a last moment thing, but even with everyone else who had stayed for Michael's sake and had time to prepare the last letter to their loved ones; no one was unaffected by the knowledge of The Burn and The Fall of the Federation. It was one thing to understand that your family was long dead due to the passage of time, it was another thing to understand that eventually your descendants did not have a happy ending. If they had descendants or relatives this far in the future odds were they lived a scavenger-type of life; eeking out survival through the scarcity trade of dilithium. A life every crewman here would have to face once Discovery's dilithium stores ran out.

Hugh didn't think he had any Culbers to find in the future. He had been his parents' only child. Maybe Paul had someone in the future, a Stamets he could find and want to help out of familiarity.

His break ended. Hugh took his half eaten food back to the replicator to be dematerialized for resources. Even that tiny action used up a smidgeon of warp core power which in turn used a smidgeon of dilithium to regulate the intermix. He idly wondered if the ship would need a kitchen to prepare actual food scrounged planetside, to save on warp power. He turned to leave the mess hall, and as he walked down the row of tables, his imagination placed a kitchen on the far wall in front of him. It would need to have a gas powered fire to cook with to spare the warp core, and so that there was no need to keep a wood store onboard. He made a mental note to replicate a means of measuring caloric output for any scavenged food the crew may get off any planet. He would also need a way to measure toxin and compare it to the crew species profiles.

Hugh's musings took him all the way to sickbay where he grabbed a random padd off a tabletop. A tap on the screen showed that it was in blank mode. Whoever was using it must have signed onto a different padd. Hugh tapped it gently against his badge and let the device sync to his user profile. His schedule for the next few hours loaded on screen. He stared at his first appointment.

_Adira Tal - crew intake_

The person who he assumed must be Adira Tal just by sake of being the only unrecognizable face in the room, was sat on a biobed, her legs swaying above the ground.

His husband Paul stood next to Adira, smiling expectantly. He looked at Hugh adoringly, then turned to Adira and said, "This is Hugh, he's going to take excellent care of you while you're onboard."

"Okay," Adira said.

Paul made no motion to move away. He stared at Adira for a second considering.

"Paul?" Hugh asked.

"Also you might want to lead with the whole," Paul waved a hand at her torso. "While hilarious to think of Hugh's face when he sees the scan, I think it would be best not to alarm him unduly."

"Paul. Intakes are private," Hugh reminded him.

"I'm going." On his way out of sickbay, Paul passed by close enough to Hugh to hold his shoulder for a moment. Hugh took the split-second provided to bend his head and kiss the edge of Paul's wrist. Paul left.

Hugh smiled at Adria and approached. "Is it okay if I take a scan of you while we talk?" Hugh asked, immersing himself in his doctor-mode.

Adira nodded and said, "I have a symbiont," she pointed at stomach height. "His name is Tal."

"Hence Adira Tal?" Hugh flicked the buttons on the side of the biobed and looked up at the large screen on the wall over the bed. Adira swung over so she was sat on the bed with her legs up on the foam pad. The scan took several seconds but resolved itself into a highly detailed model of Adira's insides. Sure enough, nestled in a pouch between the stomach and intestines, was another lifeform. The worm-form being had several large blood vessels connecting it to the large and small intestine. It also had several nerve tendrils woven through her body to connect with the spinal cord. Hugh studied the pattern for a moment, then asked, "How deep does the connection go? Does Tal have muscle control over your body?"

"No, it's just a transference of memories," Adira answered.

"I've never seen this species before," he marvelled at the complexity of the neural connection.

"It's a trill, um. Captain Saru said there was information in the ship's computer, but I can download some files from the old Fed Net if you need," she offered.

He looked down at her and smiled. "Thank you. It will be good to have a baseline for comparison in case anything ever happens." He slid his finger across his padd and brought the visual file down to display on the smaller screen. "The scan says you're human."

Adira nodded.

"Is it okay if I take down a detailed profile for your crewmen account?" he asked.

"Sure."

Hugh patiently read off the required profile questions. It was exhaustive, but Adira was accommodating.

"Are there any dietary or allergy restrictions we should know about?" he asked, almost at the end of the questionnaire.

"No."

Hugh sighed at the next question. He had to ask it, but he always hated it. "Do you have any next-of-kin to inform if anything happens to you, just in case."

"No." Adira looked away.

Hugh thought she looked hesitant. "You can tell me, everything you say here is private for medical use only," he said.

"Usually, symbionts don't die with the host. Tal could live if a volunteer were found in time. Or maybe you'll have made contact with the trill world by then and be able to send him home. I can build you a stasis transport chamber for....just in case."

He observed that, “You’re very...sanguine about your potential death.”

She shrugged. “I’ve died seventeen times,” she explained. “I’m not scared of it.”

* * *

Later that night, Hugh met up with Paul for dinner. Paul was already sat, and shoveling food into his mouth as quickly as possible. Hugh put his tray and padd down next to Paul's tray as he sat down. “You might want to breathe, honey,” he suggested, leaning into him for a second so that their thighs squished together.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you would be working late," Paul explained. "I was gonna go help Adira choose stuff from the Quartermaster database. She came onboard with nothing but her clothes.” 

Hugh nodded, separating out his cutlery and slicing up his meatloaf into several bite size pieces. “I believe that,” he said. “She seem very matter of factly uncertain, or maybe uncertainly matter of fact.” Now that his food was all cut, Hugh could reach out and hold Paul’s left hand.

“Suppose 1000 years of life experience will do that to you,” Paul suggested absently. He looked so awestruck at their hands on the table top, with their fingers interlaced.

Hugh stared at him. There was nothing in the scan that suggested the symbiont was a thousand years old. There was no synaptic degradation, no plaque in the brain tissue. He hadn't had time to review the files in the database so he didn't know how fast cellular regeneration occurred for the trill, but he saw no signs of its failing. Of course he couldn't tell Paul any of this so he just said, “You really think Tal could be a thousand years old?”

Paul shrugged, a strange look on his face.

“What are you thinking?”

“Adira is just so young,” he said. “Impulsive too, she sabotaged the ship just so she could crawl around satisfying curiosity.”

A tray clanged next to them and Jett Reno sat across from Hugh. “What are we talking about?” she asked, then took a huge bite of her soft shelled taco.

Paul stared at her. “Where the hell have _you_ been for the past three days?” he asked.

“Deck 5 section 8,” she answered.

Confused, Paul asked. “What's in deck 5 section 8?”

“Several holes into space the ice made that everyone was too busy hugging Michael to fix.”

“That's….we....we were doing other things.”

Paul looked to Hugh as if to share a telepathic thought of incredulity with his husband. Hugh innocently turned to his food and ate several bites.

“Yes, busy getting torpedoed in the saucer section,” Jett snarked. “So now we can't spin out for black alert until we finish filing down the metal tears to make the needed clearance under the brackets.”

“What?” Paul reached over with his free hand to grab Hugh’s padd on Hugh’s other side. He tilted his head at Hugh, and Hugh nodded that it was okay to use. Paul tapped it at his badge and let his files load on screen. The padd went down onto the table so he could scroll with one hand, since he was still holding Hugh’s hand. “No one told me this.” He sped read through all his missed messages, flicking left or right to keep or trash the missives as needed.

“You were busy,” she shrugged. “We had it handled.”

“You signed off on this?”

“Well, you were on bed rest still, or suppose to be.”

Hugh found himself nodding with Jett’s statement. Paul went from bleeding in a jeffries tube to running about spore jumping to Earth just a day later. He would have liked Paul to stay in bed for several days to recuperate more from the impalement. 

“You can't sign off on engineering repairs,” Paul argued.

“Yes I can, I outrank you.”

Paul glared at Jett. 

Jett stared back.

Eventually, Paul looked back down to the padd. “Fine,” he capitulated.

Hugh looked from Jett to Paul and back again. “Teach me your ways,” he requested to Jett, solemnly.

Jett snorted in laughter as Paul told him to “hush.”

The far doors swished open. Paul looked up and his eyes met Adira who stood in the doorway. “As _wonderful_ as this has been,” he told Jett dryly, “I have to go,” he told Hugh and kissed his cheek. 

Before Hugh released his Paul’s hand he told him, “I might be home late.” He needed to go to the quartermaster himself; get replacements for everything he’d left behind in the past.

Paul nodded then rose from the table. He left the padd behind and joined up with Adira, leading her away from the mess hall.

“Is it okay if we don't talk,” Jett asked. “I don't really have anything to tease you with yet.”

“There are other means of talking than teasing,” Hugh told her.

“Have you met me?”

Hugh conceded the point. They finished their meal in silence.

* * *

Paul was already in bed when Hugh got back to their quarters. Hugh now had a mass fabrication order for various bits and bobs of a life lived. Luckily, over the course of his time on Discovery he had had most of his stuff scanned to be backed up as replicator patterns. Last year, when Voq/Ash had killed him, his partition of the ship's database had been merged with Paul’s partition. Paul never deleted the data, not even when Hugh had shunned and spurned him upon his return to life, and wanted nothing to do with him. Despite the horrific sequence of circumstances that led to such a thing, Hugh was grateful he could recreate the pictures of his family, his favorite blanket, some items his mother had sent him, and his father’s necklace. The quartermaster just had to move some files around and give Hugh a new partition before he would be able to call up the old patterns in the replicator.

For today, Hugh made do with a pair of standard pajamas fabricated for him last night. He took a quick sonic shower and got dressed. Paul lurched out of bed to join him at the sink to brush their teeth. They spent more time staring at each other and grinning then actually brushing teeth.

“I’m so glad you're here,” Paul said around his toothbrush.

“I am too,” Hugh admitted.

They slid into bed together, on their sides just looking at each other in the soft darkness. Paul held him by the waist, while Hugh weaved his legs between Paul’s. 

“Can I kiss you?” Hugh asked.

Paul inhaled sharply. “Always,” he said.

Hugh rolled forward and met Paul in a small kiss which grew into a never ending series of kisses and caresses.

Eventually, after several minutes of kissing and petting, with their shirts half off, Paul pulled back. “Can we…” he broke off with a whine as Hugh sucked a hickey into his neck.

Reflexively, Hugh palpated the skin on Paul’s left pectoral muscle: checking the integrity of where he had been impaled less than a week ago. But there was no damage. Paul was fully healed. He turned the motion into a gentle scratch with his nails. Goosebumps rose on Paul’s skin.

“Yeah, I'd like to,” Hugh rolled back, pulling Paul on top of him.

In the soft darkness they made love. From Hugh’s perspective it was the first time he was making love to Paul in two years. He felt shame over the thought he’d almost lost this, forever, because he didn't know how to connect with how much he loved his husband.

Later, they lay naked under the covers. Paul lay on his back catching his breath. Hugh lay on his side, admiring every hickey he’d left on Paul’s skin. This close he also saw all the micro-expressions flickering over Paul’s face. The relaxation slowly morphed to thinking which morphed to concern. 

“What are you thinking about?” Hugh asked.

“Hmm? Nothing,” Paul answered too quickly 

Hugh considered this and said, “which tells me it's not about me or the frankly magnificent sex we just had.”

“All our sex is magnificent.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere. You can tell me anything, you know that.”

“I’m worried about Adira,” Paul admitted, “she's too young to be galivanting about a starship.”

“You’re the one who said she had 1000 years experience,” Hugh reminded him.

“In a sixteen year old brain. You remember what it was like to be sixteen.”

“Shit,” he whispered.

“Right?”

“What are you thinking?”

But Paul stayed silent, his head turned so he could stare at Hugh. Probably trying to telepathically send him a thought like earlier at dinner. The thought Hugh’s mind developed was so outrageous he believed it _must_ have come straight from Paul’s brain to his own, despite all existing evidence to the both of them being as psychic as a brick wall.

“We cannot just adopt a sixteen year old,” Hugh said sternly.

“I was gonna ask her first.”

Hugh smushed his face into the pillow to hide. 

“She needs someone to provide guidance and experience,” Paul explained cheerfully. “I’ve had loads of practice with Tilly.”

“You made Tilly cry the first day she worked for you.”

“See, I know what not to do!”

“No.”

Paul scoffed. “You didn't let me keep Tardy---”

“Tardy?”

“--the tardigrade. I can't keep Adira. Honestly, it's like you don't want me imprinting my brilliance on the next generation,” Paul moaned, laughing: bullshitting with a massive grin.

“I let you keep Tilly,” Hugh added, joining in on the ridiculousness. 

Their laughter died.

“Oh well, it was a thought,” he sighed wistfully.

“Are you being serious?”

“Maybe half. I dunno. Just a passing fancy. Ignore me,” Paul said. He reached for Hugh and Hugh let himself be nested half-on Paul’s chest, wrapped in his arms and the blankets.

They fell asleep that way.

* * *

When morning shift came, Hugh was walking through the corridor about to enter sickbay’s doors, when he noticed a strange shadow on the bulkhead. He looked up in startlement and saw Adira sitting in the jeffries tube of the ceiling.

“Adira?” he called out.

She kneeled over and stuck her head down through the opening.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“I’m fine. Commander Burnham hasn't assigned me a work station yet,” she explained. 

“Why are you in the ceiling?”

“It's quiet here and I’m not in anyone’s way. Doctor Pollard said I could stay and work here as long as I didn't get too close to sickbay’s vents for privacy needs.”

“And what are you working on?” he asked. 

She held a padd up so he could see it. “I’m preparing a report for Captain Saru about the 900 years you all’ve missed.”

“And you have first hand knowledge of all that?”

Adira rearranged herself so she wasn't kneeling at the edge anymore, but laying down so that her head rested on her hands which rested on the hatch edge. She nodded, with her chin digging into her fingers.

Hugh marveled at her existence and told her so, saying, “you’re an incredible person, Adira Tal.”

She blinked and said, “thank you.”

Hugh had to head into sickbay to start his shift. He left Adira laying on her back holding the padd above her head, typing furiously with her thumbs.

* * *

When lunch came around, Hugh stood under the same access hatch and called out, “Adira?” Though he had no reason to believe she hadn't moved around in the tube in the five hours since he'd last seen her.

A passing Keyla stared at him as he shouted to the jeffries tube.

“Yes?” Adira poked her head out. “Hi,” she said to Keyla

“Hi,” Keyla answered puzzled and continued on her way.

“Have you eaten lunch yet?” Hugh asked.

She shook her head.

“Come on, then,” Hugh invited.

She climbed her way down the ladder and joined him on his way walking down the corridor.

“How’s your report going?” he asked.

“It’s 57 pages so far.”

“You might want to make an index timeline of important events to put at the front,” he said after a long moment of consideration.

She glanced sideways at him and carefully said nothing.

“That's just the timeline?” he asked incredulously.

With a shrug, Adira said, “You jumped over a lot of events. Perhaps it could use some trimming,” she added considering. “I have to collate what I believe are important events I remember doing in one life, with the actual importance of the event as it's remembered and taught in the history which I learned in subsequent lives.” In response to his facial expression, she further added, “everything is important when you're doing it, but what matters is how it actually affected history.”

“Will it sound weird if I say, I both envy and fear the way your mind thinks?”

“I’ve had stranger compliments.”

Hugh took one step into the mess hall and stopped, looking for Paul. He found his husband in the corner, eating and talking to Tilly. Hugh nudged Adira to show them the possible seating option and she nodded. Together they got their food and sat down at the round table. 

Paul grinned smugly at Hugh. Then he raised his eyebrows suggestively. And when that didn't get a response, he darted his eyes to Adira, again and again. Hugh conceded to Paul with a nod. There was no hope for it. Somehow they were gonna mentor Adira, a one thousand year old teenager. Hugh sighed into his food. Paul knocked his foot into Hugh’s. Hugh knocked back. They hooked their feet together and ate lunch with their friends.

Tilly and Adira ate on, oblivious to the silent mental agreement now between Hugh and Paul.

**Author's Note:**

> And I know the episode states Adira would have trouble accessing Tal's memories, because they are human; but I wonder if the producers are going to use that as an excuse for Adira to be used for exposition, except when the plot demands they don't remember whatever vital fact is needed for drama.
> 
> This is fanfiction, I can pick and choose my canon.
> 
> Also: I think I'm gonna explain away all of Jett Reno's absences as her actually fixing whatever ship's problems occur in the episodes while the main characters are off doing everything. Stamets may be chief engineer, but Reno actually gets the stuff done.
> 
> Also also: what's the point of removable metal badges if they aren't combadges. Sure they have the crewman's name and serial number so I guess they can be used like dog tags except there would need to be a second badge to leave behind on the body for later identification. I decided they act as all purpose transmitting fobs: an RFID tracker that lets the crew log into their computer accounts, use the replicators, use the transport beams, etc.
> 
> And I refer to Adira with the trill naming convention, where the trill name becomes the host surname.


End file.
